Attachment B: Conference Call/Meeting Minutes - The History Makers

The HistoryMakers IMLS Advisory Board Meeting Minutes October 17-18, 2010• Emily Martorano: background of the IMLS grant, fellowship, training program at TheHistoryMakers• Julieanna Richardson: goals of program – 1) hope for more public outreach from archivalprofession. With home digitization and archiving there is a real opportunity to popularizeprofession now. 2) Hope to increase diversity in the profession. Challenge facing PhD programsin many disciplines throughout the country.• Julieanna Richardson: can we identify six potential fellows per year? Need to be aggressiveabout outreach.• Brenda Banks: at SAA level, there has been a lack of a major campaign to promote archives as aprofession. "We don't recruit a diverse audience, we don't recruit anybody." Recognizes the needto broaden our audience.• Brenda Banks: specialized archival programs are necessary (electronic records, manuscripts,etc.). Nature of archives makes it necessary for more diversified programs. Problems - lack ofunderstanding from IMLS how archives operate. Most archival institutions are now looking forpeople from history program, not library program.• Edward Papenfuse: happy to have candidates from English or Political Science backgrounds.Should not limit yourself to just library candidates.• Georgette Mayo: dual degree programs provide groundwork in other disciplines and MLS which isoftentimes necessary. Working in an ethnic archive is entirely different from a Eurocentric archive;work requires a different mindset. Appraisal and acquisitions are more difficult in theserepositories.• Patricia Williams Lessane: IMLS limits on candidates is a structural barrier• Brenda Square: process will give us feedback on how to recruit. Candidate pool will show us a lotabout how we need to recruit. Many people want to do this work - historians would makeexcellent archivists but it might be difficult to reach these people.• Kathleen Bethel: oftentimes, historians do not want the MLS degree. Other organizations haverecognized the need to diversify their professions and their training.• Brenda Banks: our recruitment document will discourage M.A. in history candidates fromapplying. It is undercutting a potential group of candidates. Pool will only be library students.Qualifications limit it only to library students.• Edward Papenfuse: two excellent people from Maryland State Archives who did not have MLSdegree.• Julieanna Richardson: qualifications will be revised to include candidate pool beyond MLS degreestudents.• Edward Papenfuse: problem might be that the program manager is defining the candidate pooltoo narrowly.• [6 people present are aware of potential candidates for the fellowship; not all are MLS students.]• Leah Kerr: moving image archives students at UCLA• Georgette Mayo: her student will be ready for second round in 2012.• Corinne Jorgenson: could a history student pursuing a MLS degree be eligible. It is often hard tochange items in IMLS grants. She is part of 2 IMLS programs in increase diversity. Very hard fora potential candidate to meet all criteria (GPA, recommendations, essays, etc.)• Ann Bishop: lack of candidates won't be the problem. Many candidates might regard theopportunity as a job - promote the opportunity at ALA, ASIS, etc.• Patricia Williams Lessane: how many African American students will apply?• Julieanna Richardson: will there be more standardization in education/training in archivalprograms?Taken by John Briestansky and Emily Martorano, compiled by Emily Martorano.